Wine Braised Belly (东坡肉）

This is my version of wine braised pork belly. I recently bought an all in one cooker and was excited to make dishes from it. I was quite pleased how easy it was for me to prepare a dish while I am doing other things at the same time. The dish came out perfect! This is my first time making this dish and let me tell you, my husband just can’t stop raving about it. He normally would just eat a quarter cup of rice, but tonight, he just couldn’t resist it and added more. The meat is so tender, sweet and savoury. （油而不腻，是一个很好下饭的一道菜). Try it and you will not regret it!

Ingredients

1kg Pork Belly
2 bunches of spring onion (chopped about 3 inches long)
25g sliced ginger

Seasoning

300g shao xing wine
50g jiang Qing soy sauce (premium soy sauce, I used Feng He Brand)
20g dark soy sauce
70g rock sugar – lessen if you want less sweet, up to your preference

Method

Mix all seasoning together except the rock sugar, set aside
Blanch the pork belly, rinse and pat dry. Sliced it into big chunks. (Note for blanching; Put the pork belly in a pot filled with water, then turn on the fire at high heat. Allow it to boil for a minute or two. This will remove the impurities from the pork. )
Lay the sliced spring onion into the pressure cooker pot, followed by the sliced ginger, then the meat chunks. Pour all the seasoning in, followed by the rock sugar
Cover and set the pressure cooker mode. My pressure cooker doesn’t have pork mode, so I used the bean and tendon mode which has a setting of 30 minutes. Seal the vent and press start. After 30 minutes release the pressure and open the lid to check. Now the meat is tender but the gravy has not thickened.
Keep the lid open and press the sauce thickening mode, I did this twice as I find the gravy has not thickened enough. Each time was a setting of 8 minutes. Use your own judgment to gauge how many times you need to use the thicken mode. Flip the meat to allow it to fully coat with the gravy as you thicken the sauce. The end result is a dark caramelised tender pork. Warning : Prepare more rice when you cook this dish. =)